Every month from now on I will be doing a Feature Of The Month, or FOTM for short. Each month I will do a post on a company related to webmastering.

This is the FOTM for February 2009 – Anistock Animations. Anistock is a low cost provider of 2D and 3D animation clips to use in your web designs as well as video backgrounds. They can also be used for video projects, TV, broadcasting, presentations, emails and mobile marketing.

The Thing With Animations
The thing with animation clips is they can either look brilliant or really tacky and rubbish. The animation has to be ideal for your website and not just random but you chose it because “it looked nice”. Done wrong they look terrible, pointless, annoying. Done well though they can have a big visual impact on your designs and really separate your website from competitors.

Choice
As far as I’m aware Anistock are the largest provider of its kind, they have thousands of clips. Some of them look good but I have no idea how they could be used by anyone, a few look tacky and should be avoided, but most of them are good quality and I can see how they could be used.

Availability Of HD
If you have a super slick website and need a clip in high definition you can pay $5 for a clip to be ugraded, very good value for money in my opinion.

Cost
You can’t just visit the website and buy one animation, you have to buy a ‘plan’. The cost varies from plan to plan.

The cheapest plan is $19.95 for the Webpro 10 plan where you get 10 downloads. The most expensive is $79.95 which is a partnership with iCLIPART and gives you 1 years unlimited downloads from over 7.8 million photos, clip art, fonts, graphics and you also get 120 downloads from the Anistock website! Depending on how often you do web designs all packages are decent value for money I think.

Conclusion
Overall I think Anistock provide very good value for money. Used properly these animations can help you stand out from competition. Alternatively if they are being used for presentations, emails or mobile marketing they can give that edge of quality you normally wouldn’t be able to achieve.

Website: Anistock.com